Friday, March 13, 2015

What You Don't Know About Underage Drinking

Underage drinking is very common along with binge drinking, especially on college campuses, but for minors consuming alcohol the biggest concern might not be getting caught. Everyone who participates in underage drinking knows the risks that come with it: getting in trouble with the law, with your parents, or with your friends. But we may be ignoring one of the greatest, the long-term detrimental effects of teenage alcohol consumption. During adolescence the human brain is not yet fully developed and particularly susceptible to external influences, in particular drugs and alcohol. A study by Wanette Vargas et al. used rat models to show that adolescence drinking can have serious effects on your brain and subsequent performance.

Researchers examined the causal effect of alcohol consumption in adolescence and adulthood on the medial prefrontal cortex and corpus callosum. The prefrontal cortex is associated with high-level brain function including personality, decision making, and social behavior. It is largely involved in inhibiting inappropriate behavior. The medial prefrontal cortex is also involved in working memory, the cursory storage of information being actively used. It has connections to the corpus callosum, a structure that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and allows the two halves to communicate and coordinate with each other.

To model binge drinking, adolescent rats were given access to self-administered sweetened alcohol. In adulthood some of these rats, along with controls, were given alcohol vapor to model alcoholism. Looking at the brains of these rats, researchers found several striking differences between rats that were binge drinkers or alcoholics and control groups. They found that adolescent drinking reduced the amount of white matter in the medial prefrontal cortex. Specifically, they found a reduction in the density of myelin in this area. Myelin is a material that coats the outside of neurons and increases the speed at which they communicate.

Perhaps the most startling of their findings was that this myelin degradation persisted into adulthood. The lost of myelin can lead to decreased communication between neurons and even this loss of signal. To see the effect of the degradation Vargas and colleagues examined the performance of these rats, both in adolescence and in adulthood, in a T-maze. This maze is meant to test memory and learning. They found that adolescence rats that underwent binge drinking performed significantly worse in the maze, suggesting that binge drinking during adolescence can lead to memory deficits in adulthood.

The corpus callosum was degraded in both adolescence binge drinking rats and adult alcoholism rats, specifically in the regions connecting to the front of the brain. Strangely both groups exhibited similar levels of corpus callosum degradation. This result is particularly astonishing because the adolescent binge-drinking rats consumed much less alcohol with less repeated exposure than the adult alcoholic rats. This indicates the adolescence brain is indeed very susceptible to alcohol. The corpus callosum damage was correlated to increased relapse-like drinking behavior seen in these rats. In addition to relapse drinking, loss of the corpus callosum is linked to depression, addiction, and several other serious conditions.

It is necessary to note that this impact of alcohol was observed in rats and while some of these results have been recorded in humans, it is possible that alcohol may not affect humans in the same way or to the same magnitude. Additionally, Vargas and colleagues admit that effects observed may not be causal. However, even with these considerations the effect of teenage drinking, especially binge drinking, should not be taken lightly as it may have devastating long-term effects on brain function leading to memory problems and even a greater chance of developing alcoholism in adulthood.

13 comments:

After focusing on the human nervous system in Human Physiology lecture, the results discussed in this post were easier to understand. It was stated that the consumption of alcohol during teenage years reduces the amount of white matter in the medial prefrontal cortex and reduces the density of myelin. Therefore, it is difficult for the brain to send rapid signals to other parts of the body to preform a specific function. This has a detrimental effect on the body regarding daily functions, which stays with you for a life time. While I found this post especially interesting, teens will never take scientific research seriously and stop drinking during their teen years. Teens enjoy the memories from late nights in college more than they do about their long-term health.

It is surprising and alarming that adolescent rats who consumed less alcohol as alcoholic adult rats showed the same brain degradation. As you mentioned, this experiment was performed on rats and may apply differently in humans. However, I think it is hard to ignore the evidence presented in light of increased binge drinking on college campuses. Perhaps the next step is to determine exactly how much a human can drink before permanent, negative effects are set into place. (I speculate that this number will actually be quite low). In a binge drinking culture I believe that this is the only way to drive the message home.

I agree with Emily - alcohol consumption has become such deeply embedded into our culture that I don't think scientific evidence will have much of an effect. Moreover, drinking as well as drug use has been trickling down into younger and younger age groups, which suggests research isn't stopping anyone from consuming alcohol or drugs. However, I agree with the prohibiting alcohol and drugs from younger individuals but something more drastic needs to happen.

I guess I find these studies interesting because despite the rampant binge drinking that occurs on our campus and others, the students are still able to go on and become very productive members of society. So if the studies were able to be applied to humans, would we be saying that we are literally throwing our memories away, and that the millions of college students who binge drink are actually not contributing as much to society as they could? I think that this study may not be totally translate-able to humans, as you mentioned in the last paragraph not all of the studies have been replicated in humans, and I feel that we may have already seen more adverse outcomes from binge drinking in young adults if it affected us as much as it does rats. Not to say that binge drinking has no adverse effects, but I wonder how the effects on rats should be interpreted if we are starting to find that they are not replicable in humans.

I agree with sarah in that there are kids (even here at Colgate) that drink a lot and still perform as well as other students who do not participate in underage drinking. I also think it would be interesting to find out what constitutes as "adolescent". What changes occur in the brain between the ages of 20 and 21? Why is 21 the age that it is acceptable to start drinking?

I agree with the comment above; it would be interesting to find out as what constitutes as an "adolescent." The drinking age in the US is 21, while in most European countries, it is 18 or sometimes even younger. Overall, I think interfering the developing brain of an adolescent in any way, in this case, using external drugs such as alcohol or even cannabis can have detrimental impacts on the brain for the future.

In high school, I spent a month studying abroad in Italy. While there, I noticed that the drinking culture is very different from that in the United States. Youth are introduced to alcohol at a younger age, and subsequently drink a little bit habitually rather than a lot sporadically. Based on the findings in this article, I would like to see whether such an approach would be more or less detrimental to cognitive health, as I think it would change our societal views on drinking greatly.

I'm sort of split on this. On the one hand, too many blackout nights can have serious long term effects on the brain. I've worked in a homeless shelter which was full of people who binged drank often and it ultimately ended up destroying their life. On the other hand, I see kids at Colgate binge drinker 4 times a week and still come to class the next day as an active participator. I'd like to know what makes people more susceptible to heavy drinking and how genetic/environmental factors play a role in these two sides of the spectrum when it comes to humans.

I found this study very interesting, particularly because of its relevance on this campus. I've heard a lot of people say stuff like "My liver's going to hate me after tonight," but I've never heard anyone say anything about ruining their brain. Alcohol's consequences to the brain need to be thought of just as much as the consequences to the liver.

This is a very interesting topic. I bet some teenagers think that adults tell them that alcohol will damage their brain just because they don't want the teens drinking at all. I think if younger people were educated about the specific effects that alcohol has been proven to have on adolescent brains, teens may be less likely to drink. Obviously, drinking culture is very prevalent on college campuses and many students probably aren't aware of the risks they pose to their own brains by excessive drinking. I'd be curious to see if there is a way to determine the impact that alcohol has on human brains.

I think this is a very important area of research given that the binge drinking college culture is a relatively new thing. I think it will be interesting to see how students of our age group progress throughout life, and if there will be serious consequences to the underage binge drinking. While most of the time we think about underage drinking in terms of the trouble you can get in with the police or school, it is important to consider why the drinking age is 21 and how this affects our culture. If we had a lower drinking age would this culture still exist? Would drinking alcohol at an early age in moderation be as detrimental to the brain as someone starting to binge drink at age 18? I think these questions are important to consider, especially when law enforcement and college try to "eliminate" drinking and end up causing more secretive binge drinking. Thinking about whether it would be worse for a freshman to be able to go to a fraternity party and drink a few beers on the weekends or if the current situation of freshman hiding and drinking large quantities of hard alcohol in shorter periods of time are more harmful to the health might help shape future drinking policies.

I find it interesting that you can compare adolescence in rats to adolescence in humans. I would think that you would not be able to compare the two, I would think that human brains would develop differently than those in rats. It is well known that binge drinking alcohol will deterioate the brain, I wonder to what extent this can happen and exactly what quantity of alcohol would do this and if it gets progressively worse each time you drink.